Scared to Live bcadf-7

by Stephen Booth

  ‘They never stood a bloody chance, did they?’ said Murfin.

  Fry glanced at him. His flippancy was gone, and he was sweating a little despite the draught stirring the curtains behind him. Of course, Gavin was a family man, with children of his own. There were some things that got to you, no matter how hard you tried to keep up the exterior.

  ‘They say it’s better to die of smoke inhalation than burn to death, anyway,’ she said, though she didn’t expect it to help. Her own flesh still crawled at the thought of the flames.

  She looked away from Murfin before he could distract her concentration. This room had been packed with plastics, too — TV, video recorder, racks of CDs and DVDs, boxes full of children’s toys under a shelf in the corner. Most of the toys were just a molten mess now, multi-coloured pools of lava that had run on to the carpet and congealed in the spray from the firemen’s hoses. There were recognizable shapes here and there — the twisted controls of a PlayStation console, the burned edge of a Monopoly game. The head and one arm of a Barbie doll waved from a skin-toned puddle, like someone drowning in a sea of their own flesh. Something scorched and wooden gazed accusingly at her from blackened eyes.

  Then a tiny flash of colour caught her attention. A glint of bright yellow, like a drop of sunlight in the blackness. She crouched towards the floor and gently blew away the ash. A broken section of Monopoly board lay at her feet: Piccadilly and the Water Works.

  Of course, the untreated polyurethane foam in the furniture had been the real problem. Brian Mullen had definitely had a point. Lindsay could have spent her money more wisely if she’d replaced the cheap sofa instead of the carpet. The outcome really could have been different. For a start, her children might still be alive.

  When she walked through into the kitchen, Fry found it almost pristine and untouched, apart from a few muddy footprints on the vinyl flooring. From the condition of the teak-effect units and the white painted walls, she would never have guessed there had been a fire at all. She felt as though she’d stepped out of one film set and into another, where an entirely different story was taking place. This one suggested a harmless domestic comedy — a family eating breakfast together in their spotless kitchen, Mum and Dad and the kids, all chattering and laughing, hurrying to get ready for work or school. Behind her, the other room might have been the scene of a cheap horror film, except the credits had already rolled and the crew had packed up and gone home.

  ‘Diane, do you want to have a look upstairs?’ called Murfin, without enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes, in a minute.’

  Fry took a last look at the kitchen, with its silent smoke alarm. She noticed that the cooker was new, too. A Smeg dual-fuel with air-cooling system. A thousand pounds or so, she guessed. Money wasn’t all that short in the Mullen household, after all.

  She went back through the sitting room and joined Gavin at the foot of the stairs. She wasn’t sure that she needed to visit the bedrooms. They might have been where the victims died, but they weren’t where the fire had started. If there had been a crime committed, it was here on the ground floor that the evidence would be found, surely?

  As she was debating with herself, Murfin settled the question by hauling himself slowly up the stairs, sighing at every step. Fry had no choice but to follow him.

  And, in a way, the bedrooms weren’t quite so bad. It was clear that the flames hadn’t reached here. The furniture was almost untouched, though covered by a layer of soot. The covers of the beds had been pulled back, revealing clean, unmarked sheets. The first room she saw might simply have been waiting for Lindsay Mullen to come home and clean up the mess. Apart from the markers where her body had lain when she collapsed from smoke inhalation, of course.

  ‘Have you got the photos there, Gavin?’

  Murfin grunted and passed her the file. Fry had seen the photographs before she came out, and remembered the condition of Lindsay’s body, the cotton pyjamas she’d been wearing, with the left leg rucked up to expose a thin, white calf. Her face was only visible in the close-ups, turned to the right, her left cheek pressed tightly to the floor.

  It wasn’t Lindsay Mullen’s face that Fry was interested in, but the position of her body, the angle of her limbs. She turned one of the photos to align it with the room, and checked the direction of the door. Lindsay had almost certainly been going the wrong way. It wasn’t too difficult to picture her, blinded and disorientated by darkness and dense smoke, feeling her way frantically round the walls in an effort to find the door, while her children screamed in the next room. It wasn’t difficult at all. In fact, it was too easy for comfort.

  ‘Next room, Gavin,’ she said.

  ‘That’s the kids’ bedroom.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Jack and Liam Mullen had died without leaving their beds, according to the incident reports. They woke up choking, and died from the effects of smoke inhalation. Died calling for their mum, probably.

  The house must have been so full of smoke by then that the boys would never have made it to the stairs, let alone through the flames in the hall. Still, their bedroom wasn’t a pleasant place to be. Gavin wouldn’t even come inside the door. He knew the bodies had lain here for some time, since the boys had obviously been dead and beyond rescue. Coroners’ rules required the bodies to be left in situ until forensic evidence had been gathered to establish the cause of death.

  Of course, the vast majority of house fires were tragic accidents. Faulty wiring, a fag down the back of the sofa, clothes left too near an electric heater. If sudden deaths didn’t go automatically to CID, she wouldn’t even be here. Fire service codes on this incident were ambiguous — but then, the firefighters on the scene would have had other priorities than looking for a cause.

  Fry heard a rustle and a cough, and turned to find a uniformed PC standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing a yellow reflective jacket, and he held his helmet in one hand as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the other.

  ‘DS Fry?’ he said, looking up at her. ‘They said you’d be here. I thought you ought to know straightaway — ’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, we’ve been talking to the neighbours again. We ought to have found out earlier, I suppose, but we never thought to ask. You know what it’s like, everyone is in shock when a thing like this happens, and with the husband being taken off to hospital — ’

  ‘Out with it, for heaven’s sake.’

  He coughed again and turned the brim of his helmet in his fingers. ‘I’ve been speaking to the lady next door. She says it’s only just occurred to her to mention it … Well, it seems there were three children living at this address. Mrs Mullen had a daughter, as well as the two boys.’

  Fry stared at the charred wreckage and thought about the bedrooms. There was a closed door at the end of the landing, a third room she hadn’t entered. But the firefighters must have been through the whole house, surely? They wouldn’t have left a bedroom unchecked for victims, would they?

  ‘The daughter could be away from home,’ she said. ‘Staying over with friends for the night or something. What age is she?’

  The officer swallowed. ‘According to the neighbour, the third child is about eighteen months old.’

  Fry bit her lip. She hated incidents that involved children. Someone else ought to have taken this job. She ought to have sent one of her DCs. Not Gavin Murfin, though — well, not on his own. But Ben Cooper would have been a good choice. Cooper understood children. He knew all about families. Fry thought he’d probably read far more into the circumstances of this house than she could herself. But Cooper hadn’t been on early call this morning. You couldn’t always get the right officer for a job.

  Her eyes were drawn past the PC and back to the two bin liners standing near the front door. It was only then that she realized the bags weren’t bulging because of the amount of clothes stuffed inside them, but because the plastic had melted and sagged into obscene lumps and swellings. One of the bags had spli
t completely when Gavin pushed the door against it, and the skirt of a blue Baby Gap denim dress protruded from the rip.

  ‘Where’s the husband now?’ she asked.

  ‘Edendale General,’ said the PC. ‘He suffered minor burns and smoke inhalation trying to get into the house.’

  ‘Did you say “trying to get in”?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t at home when the fire started. I thought they would have told you.’

  ‘There seem to be a lot of things that no one’s telling me,’ said Fry. ‘Has everyone around here taken a vow of silence, or what?’

  Postman Bernie Wilding was already late with his deliveries in Foxlow that morning, when he remembered the package for Rose Shepherd. That was unusual in itself — Miss Shepherd rarely got more than bank statements and junk mail. Most days, there was nothing in his van for her at all.

  Bernie did a three-point turn at the end of Pinfold Lane and drew up to the wrought-iron gates of Bain House. He was listening to Ken Bruce on Radio Two, and he turned the volume down a bit before he lowered the window. He reached out to press the button on the intercom, but got no answering voice. That was a bit odd, too. Folk in the village said Miss Shepherd never went anywhere. She was supposed to be a bit of a hermit, shut up alone here in this big house. And sure enough, she’d never been out before when he’d called with a package.

  But he supposed even a hermit must do her shopping some time. A visit to the doctor, the dentist, the optician. Well, it was nothing to do with him, anyway.

  Bernie scribbled a message on one of his cards, and was about to push it into the letter box mounted on one of the gates. But when he opened the flap, he saw that a furniture store leaflet was still in there, along with a free newspaper that was delivered by local kids over the weekend. And that definitely wasn’t like Miss Shepherd. Even if he didn’t see her for weeks on end, he knew she was around, because she emptied the letter box. It was a sensible thing to do, otherwise it gave the impression there was no one at home. There were criminals who drove around these villages every night, looking for signs of empty properties.

  Uncertain what to do now, Bernie peered through the gates at the house standing among the trees. The curtains were drawn at the front, even on the ground floor. He didn’t know the internal layout of the house, but that must be a lounge or something. You wouldn’t leave the curtains drawn during the day, unless you were sick.

  Bernie liked to think of himself as an old-fashioned rural postman, who knew his patch and the people he delivered to. He’d heard so many stories about a postman being the first to raise the alarm when someone was ill or dead and even the neighbours hadn’t noticed. It had never happened to him yet, not in fifteen years with the Royal Mail. But he was always on the lookout for elderly people on his round, the ones who lived alone and didn’t get many visitors. Not that Rose Shepherd was all that elderly — but you never knew, did you?

  Ken Bruce was announcing the ten o’clock news bulletin. Was it so late already? Bernie knew he ought to get on — he’d already lost enough time this morning, with having so many special deliveries to make and getting stuck behind the tractor that overtook him every time he stopped. Miss Shepherd was probably out doing her shopping in Matlock, wasn’t she? Monday morning was a good time to go to the supermarket. Nice and quiet. She’d just forgotten to empty the post from her box for once. She’d do it when she got back from the shops.

  Bernie pushed his card through the flap, put the package back behind the van seat, then reversed into the road and drove on. He’d missed the news headlines, but Bruce was playing a song he remembered from the sixties — the New Seekers, ‘Now the Carnival is Over’. Bernie was singing quietly to himself as he headed back through Foxlow.

  3

  Detective Constable Ben Cooper opened his fridge door, then closed it again quickly when he caught the smell. Another thirty seconds of breathing that in, and he’d lose his appetite for breakfast. He had a brief after-image of something nasty wrapped in plastic, caught by the interior light like an exhibit at a crime scene, sordid and decomposing, its DNA degrading beyond use.

  ‘Well, do you want me to call in and see the solicitor again tomorrow morning?’ he said into his mobile phone. ‘I can manage that, if you like, Matt. But I’m not sure it’ll do any good.’

  ‘He wants a kick up the pants, that’s what’ll do him some good. Maybe I ought to go in and see him myself. What do you reckon? I’ll go straight into his office when I’ve finished the muck spreading tomorrow.’

  Cooper smiled at the thought of his brother bursting into the offices of Ballard and Price, his overalls covered in slurry. Matt could be a bit intimidating at the best of times, especially in an enclosed space. In his present mood, the solicitors’ receptionist would probably call the police to have him removed.

  ‘It wouldn’t help, you know.’

  Matt sighed in frustration. ‘Bloody pen pushers and bureaucrats. They seem to spend their time making life difficult for everyone else.’

  ‘I suppose Mr Ballard has a job to do, like the rest of us.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. He takes a lot longer about it, that’s all.’

  Cooper ran a finger round the fridge door, checking the rubber seal for gaps. It hadn’t occurred to him things could get as bad as that so quickly, just because he hadn’t bothered checking inside for a few days. It wasn’t as if the weather was particularly warm or anything. It was nearly the end of October, and summer was over in the Peak District. But the fridge had come with the flat, so he wasn’t sure how old it might be.

  ‘I don’t know what else I can do,’ he said. ‘You’re the executor, Matt.’

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten.’

  Of course, he knew what was bothering his brother and making him so impatient. Probate on their mother’s will was taking so long that he was starting to get worried about the future of Bridge End Farm. If money had to be found from the estate, the only way it could happen would be if assets were sold off.

  ‘I thought you’d know a bit more about the law than I do,’ said Matt.

  ‘Well, not this part of the law.’

  He didn’t bother to tell Matt that his knowledge of criminal law was also a bit sketchy. There were eight thousand criminal offences on the statute books — and more than a thousand of them had been invented since Cooper became a police officer. Without the manuals, he’d be lost, like everyone else.

  Cooper left the fridge alone and crossed the kitchen, dodging the cat that was sitting looking at him expectantly, having heard a rumour there might be food. On the days he was at home, meal times seemed to come round every hour.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘don’t forget how much Mr Ballard charges for his time.’

  ‘You’re right, Ben. Just a phone call then, I suppose.’

  ‘At least it’ll keep the subject fresh in his mind.’

  There was silence for a few moments. The Cooper brothers had always been comfortable with silence. They’d grown up together on the farm hardly needing to speak, because each understood what the other was thinking. But that was when they were physically together. You could read a person’s thoughts in their face, in the way they moved or breathed, or what they did with their hands. It was different on the phone, though. Silence felt awkward and wrong. Not to mention a waste of money. With his mobile pressed to his ear, Ben started to wonder whether he could get a reduced tariff from Vodaphone for the amount of non-talk time he used.

  But in this case, he sensed that there was more to his brother’s silence than awkwardness.

  ‘Is there something else, Matt?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  Ben felt his stomach tighten. For a second, he thought he was going to be sick, and he looked to see if the fridge door had fallen open again and released the nauseous smell into the room. After the death of their mother, there surely couldn’t be more bad news already. But he could read a lot into one word from his brother.

  ‘What is it? Something wrong with one of the g
irls?’

  ‘No, they’re fine,’ said Matt. ‘Well, I think so.’

  ‘You’re not making much sense, Matt.’

  ‘Look, Ben, I’ve made an appointment to go into the surgery on Friday. I want to talk to Dr Joyce. And if necessary, I’ll ask to see the specialist who treated Mum.’

  ‘Why? We know what happened to her — it was a series of strokes. It happens all the time in people of her age.’

  ‘I don’t mean the strokes. I mean the other problem.’

  The family had rarely referred to Isabel Cooper’s condition by name. For a long time, it had been ‘Mum’s problem’. Towards the end, before she died in Edendale District General from a brain haemorrhage, it had become ‘the other problem’. Now, it seemed to Ben there was no point in trying to avoid spelling it out. Mum wasn’t around any more to be upset if it inadvertently slipped out in her presence.

  ‘Oh, the schizophrenia.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Matt. What do you want to find out that we don’t already know?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you about it on the phone — it’s too complicated. Can you come over some time? I’ve got a lot of stuff to show you.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to be a bit busy this week — ’

  ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘All right, what if I call at the farm tonight when I come off duty?’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘See you, then.’

  Cooper put out a bowl of cat food and placed it on the floor in the conservatory, near the central-heating boiler. Randy was an animal with a fixed routine and firm ideas about his territory.